The Sunday Game: At the Dawn of Professional FootballIn the most complete and compelling account of the origins of professional football, The Sunday Game tells the stories of all the teams that played independent football in the small towns and industrial cities of the Midwest, from early in the twentieth century to the beginning of the National Football League shortly after the end of World War I. The foundations of what is now the most popular professional sport in America were laid by such teams as the Canton Bulldogs and the Hammond Clabbys, teams born out of civic pride and the enthusiasm of the blue-collar crowds who found, in the rough pleasure of the football field, the gritty equivalent of their own lives, a game they could cheer on Sunday afternoons, their only day free from work. |
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Akron Indians Akron Pros All-American All-Stars Altoona backfield ball baseball Canton Bulldogs Canton Repository Carlisle Institute championship Chicago Cincinnati Celts Clabbys Cleveland Indians coach college football Columbus Panhandles Cornell-Hamburgs Cusack Dame Date Opponent Score Dayton Daily Dayton Triangles defense Detroit Free Press Detroit Heralds Dorais Evanston Evanston North Ends extra point field goal football team forward pass fullback George Gym-Cadets halfback Hammond Clabbys High School Home Field Ibid Illinois independent football Jim Thorpe John kicked Knute Rockne Lambert League Mack Park Mahrt manager Massillon Independent Massillon Tigers Michigan Moline Red Nesser brothers November October Ohio Parratt Pitcairn Quakers Prior Team professional football punt quarterback Racine Rock Island Independents ROSTER sandlot season second quarter star Sunday tackle thousand fans Toledo Blade Toledo Maroons touchdown Wabash Athletic Association Wabash Plain Dealer Wayne Friars Wayne Journal-Gazette yard line Youngstown Patricians